every borrowed hour
by venusianeye
Summary: "Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love." (ranier maria rilke, letters to a young poet) [PTSD, post-Victory]


On Tuesday at about half-past two in the evening he settled his fingers (brown, calloused, heavy, warm) on your shoulders, dipping them into your clavicles, rubbing small circles onto your skin, and that was why you couldn't hear a word he said until he dipped his mouth (hot, wet, warm, familiar) to the whorled cartilage of your ear and asked: _Dirk, are you listening?_

Which was, all things considered, a foolish question - but hadn't he always been a fool.

At that moment in time, with the afternoon sun burning through the blinds and your fingertips slipping off the keyboard, the cooling fans buzzing, breath thick with the oppressive heat of the air, his touch was like a lit match on a gasoline spill. You felt like your whole body was listening to him, every nerve every tendon stretched and straining to find a thing that only his body could tell you, every cell every atom burning bright with the cacophonous joy of him touching you, moment through moment as you slid dizzy through time, one breath after another, your body singing not electric but nuclear. Your need was immediate, devastating.

He asked if you were listening. You were detonating.

_Hullo?_ he added, fingertips sinking deeper and deeper, thumbs running up the back of your neck and worrying at the knots. You thought he must be etched into your bones by now for sure. Must be living in your marrow. Feverish, drunken. Lovestung. Lovebitten. Anyone at home?

_Got some fiberoptic cable out of that chassis, I was just gonna rewire Sawtooth,_ you said, non sequitur. It seemed - somehow - erotic, to you. That sweet reluctant amorous delay. The verbal equivalent of a coy eyelash flutter, a wink, flashing a bit of leg for the fella.

_Is that so, Dirk,_ he breathed into your ear, his teeth dragging gentle over your skin, and you wondered - in a moment of gut-punch lust so strong it felt like horror's bedfellow, every hair on your body raised - if you maybe fell in love with the only man in history who would agree with your disastrous parameters for dirty talk.

(And you had had all of history to peruse, hadn't you, alone on the water.)

_Maybe you should fuck me instead_, you concluded, melting into the moment, and purely to be ironic he swung you up into his arms to carry you bridal-style out of your workroom and across the hall into your (plural) bedroom; and it was in a spirit of irony that you swooned and allowed it, throwing in a few _why mister English I never_s and _my Pa will surely tan your hide if he finds out_s (_Hang your Pa,_ he growled agreeably as you snickered into his shoulder); but the sweat-slick furious handjobs which ensued were, to be frank in the assessment, sincere as fuck.

And he held you afterwards for nearly three hours, glued to you, running his hands up and down your spine, rubbing out a hazy blur of time in which your brain and body were relaxed in tandem. Too happy to think. An overdose of attention. This total asshole went and fucking cuddled you in ninety-degree weather for three fucking hours. In hindsight you are certain you would have been a lot more vocal with disdain if you had had the capacity to think of anything but the (familiar, gentle, his) hands petting you.

_Isn't that nice,_ he'd murmured, staring at you drooling on the barrel of his chest, and you'd felt your face grin and had been too lazy and pleased with yourself to rein it in.

_Yeah,_ you'd told him, slurring. _ It is. _

(You were right of course. You always are.)

Wednesday the hot spell broke and it rained down on the city like a god had broken something, like a sea above the sky had cracked through the bottom of its basin. Perfect weather for coding, cleaning, repetitive detail work. Monotonous and steady as the water hitting the roof, the windows, the pavement. Nothing compared to a storm at sea, nothing compared to what you grew up with. A lullaby.

Of course the minute the sky split Jake leapt down the fire escape and ran to the park. He spends almost every storm outdoors, hollering joyous like a madman, the kind of lunatic you'd expect to see chasing cars and shouting sermons at fire hydrants. He's twenty-five and he still jumps in puddles and you've learned to let him, learned to stop being afraid that he'll find an adventure bigger than the two of you. (Despite his protests to the contrary you have never been afraid that he would run off with a seductive blue alien woman, owing to the fact that seductive blue alien women probably have better things to do.)

He came back drenched in rainwater and sweat, splattered with generous amounts of mud and grass, happy in that irritating way golden retrievers seem to be.

You nearly shut the door on him but he managed to get his foot and a (possibly loaded) Beretta in the way before you could close it. In the interest of not ruining every surface he was likely to touch (read: all of them) you made him strip down to his boxers in the entryway and he laughed and told you you were _lucky I happen to be wearing boxers today, chum,_ and his green eyes sparkled with mirth and you remembered then - like a cherry pit stuck in the back of your throat, like a slap in the face - just how lovely he was, and how much you wanted him.

_Unlucky,_ you'd corrected him, breath ragged.

He caught the look in your eye then, licked his lips. Casually slung both of his guns past you, one at a time - you heard them clattering against the floor in the hallway but you'd be damned if you'd be the first one to blink.

_Oh no,_ he drawled, holding his empty palms up, feigning dismay. _You've caught me unarmed._

Jesus. What a fucking ham.

You crushed against him like a tide crashing against concrete, pushing him to the back of the door, attached at the mouth. You were standing on his sodden clothes and he was still soaking wet but you didn't care at all, you wanted to absorb every drop of filth, you wanted to pin him down and drive him madder and you wanted to make him feel so good he might die of it.

It's insane of you to want him this much and Jake doesn't care; maybe that makes him the crazy one.

But you've had nightmares - once after a few bad nights when he was away you dreamed you were a famine, you were starvation tumbling through a wasted land of hunger and thirst. A stomach that would always be empty. A mouth that would never stop eating.

And he opened his arms, bid you eat your fill, and you ate him alive.

You woke up from that one retching and alone, and waited until he got back to sleep again.

But on that rainy Wednesday, in the evening, you dragged him into the den and fucked him over the arm of the couch, sliding between his perfect thighs, one hand gripping the back of his neck, the other caressing his dick. He's noisy, in the act of orgasm - if you had neighbors they might complain - but when you came he made tender sounds in the back of his throat, a low hum.

Sprawled across the couch together afterwards, idly flicking through television channels, you drifted back towards thought. _Are you okay?_ you whispered, gingerly tracing a spot on his shoulder you didn't remember biting, limbs yet vibrating with adrenaline. As though his weight on your chest was the only thing keeping you down, the only proof of gravity you'd ever believe in.

He laughed at you and said _Why wouldn't I be?_

_... Oh, Dirk, why wouldn't I be?_ he asked again, softer and gentler, kissing you as your eyes went red. Your face was doing something strange.

_Go back to the Mythbusters_, you said, through a thick throat.

_It's a rerun,_ he informed you, putting his glasses back on, squinting at the programming guide. The conversation you always have, only with the roles reversed - you could have laughed, it was objectively funny, if only you hadn't been preoccupied with the ultra-serious business of protecting your dignity by not crying after sex.

_... It's fine._

_So am I,_ he rejoined, picking up the remote, thumbing at the buttons, licking sweetly into your mouth again. It had a final quality, the way he said it - a closing remark.

Wednesday night you curled close into him, soft ambient mood, a dream state as viscous as honey drifting through your body as you clung to him in bed and slept, waking whenever he stirred. You felt cloying and boneless and he seemed solid, but every time you woke for a startled moment you checked his pulse to reassure yourself he was alive - at eleven, half past, and quarter to midnight.

* * *

At half past noon on Thursday the rain stopped but the sky was still thick with clouds, dragging their gray bellies over the skyscrapers, and you were tired. It was a Thursday weary with a kind of inner-ear pressure, barometric depression. When you woke up he was already gone.

Kind of a shit way to start the remains of the day - sense-memory echoes of his hands on your body wouldn't comfort you any, you were the emotional equivalent of grease, smeared on a window, human scum.

You spent two hours in the shower, until the water ran as cold as it ever does in the summer - tepid like the temperature of tears, and you thought: if only you could unscrew the lid of your skull and let it wash everything out. Fragments of your unhappiness dissolved, slid off of your skin; bitter chalky aftertastes lingered in the back of your throat, you relaxed your jaw and let your mouth brim over with water. Pretended you were a fountain - automatic water from the eyes a clever engineering trick, not a fault in the program.

At three thirty you were tautly dry, slouched in front of a second cup of dark roast. He had left you eggs and bacon but you'd slept so late and it was so damn warm and he always went too rich on the butter - found the whole plate congealed, spoilt, oily film on your rotting mood.

Watched the food disappear down the garbage disposal, hearing and feeling the motor roar, soft little domestic lie; idly promised yourself in the dull echo chamber of your brain that if he asked you'd tell him _it was nice of you._ Refuse to mention that you hadn't eaten. Real sweet, aren't you. Can't let your man know you can't abide his cooking, no sir. For don't you love him so. Tried to hum - shards of music broken, scattering wherever.

Licked the inside of your teeth, the flavor of ketones (hunger, urgency) buried beneath the bitterness of coffee, and ran the dishwasher, if only to listen to something else make noise.

(Appetite abandons you from time to time like a stray cat but it comes back to you, provided you go through the motions. Like some simple stubborn thing in the pit of you that would never stop kicking or grinding away, eating you up from within.)

Half past four you decided takeout for dinner. There was nothing else to do, not in a mood like that - couldn't even touch yourself, bleary in a fog of disgust. You've only one medicine for this kind of sick, only one cure for the blues; you knew it deep and weary like a law of the universe.

(He'll come back and you'll forget what it ever felt like to have him gone, brain editing out the ellipsis the same way it snips five-hour airport terminal delays out of your memory. Pruning the neurons. He'll be back. Lather, rinse, repeat.)

It's always only a matter of killing the time.

And so - having made an effort - at five in the evening you collapsed on the couch and put Bach on repeat, let your mind evaporate in waves from your skin, let the music replace you.

_Sleeping?_ you heard, felt the brush of his hand in your hair, the pull as his rough skin caught at the strands, and the voice was his and it slid through some filmy membrane into the dream you were having. All you did was smile, still wavering on the border between present and absent, still tenuously real.

Thursday's second wake-up call.

His lips were chapped and his skin flushed sunburn-warm; the way he smells seeped into you, burning other things out - rough knuckles gentle rubbed up and down your throat to coax your chin up where he wanted it, introduced your tongues.

A cog catching on something - voltage finally overloading the thick capacitor of the morning's fugue and you were solid. Visceral. Real.

You tugged him down on top of you and wouldn't let him up again.

It made him laugh (fond, throaty, richer than his cooking, dearer sound than any), and then he murmured things much too low and hot to listen to, into your skin and your mouth. You ate up the attention, held him too close for him to wedge a hand between your stomachs, kissing obnoxiously.

He rolled his hips and you only clung tighter, barnacle strength in your limpet limbs, too greedy to let go anywhere. He has the brawn to peel you off of him. You, plural, knew this, and you both also knew he was enjoying you (and your bad manners) enough to wait for you to cave first. He thought you would cave first, that's the thing. Some people are just born suckers.

_You're going to ruin your nice clean clothes_, he crooned into your ear an hour later, annoyed and impressed, and you gave him a kiss-drunk grin, lips swollen, flexing your grip.

_Mm. Nah. I don't think so._

A long, weighted pause. Jake doesn't so much have bedroom eyes as he has hunter's eyes, eyes that answer yours the way a gun might answer a sword, and that night his eyes alone could have ruined a great deal of your clothing. A lurch of vertigo in the pit of your stomach. You held your breath, admired.

_... Afraid I beg to differ, mate_, he told you, all sunshine and cheer. And then flipped you facedown with annoying ease, pinning your wrists down, stripping your shorts off.

_Takeout?_ he asked you afterwards, kissing the sweat off your brow.

_Yeah_, you murmured, stupefied, hoarse, letting him fuss. You aren't often vocal. You were, though, that Thursday; you felt split open, wounded with bliss, bewildered by something that transcended your ability to grip it. Lost in him.

_... Chinese or Thai?_ he whispered, his voice his weight and hands and the burn in your body and the ease of him holding you like an anchor, the only anchor you know, the only lodestone; you were still wandering, dazed, through pleasure. You felt the way you imagine almost-too-ripe fruit must, fragrant and teetering on the brink of rot, sweet to the point of ruin.

He repeated the question.

_... Indian_, you said, distant, and he laughed, worry melting like dew.

* * *

When you woke up on Friday you didn't remember your dreams. Thank god for that. Thank god, and thank the simple weight of his body on the mattress beside you, the noise of his breathing perpetual and low through the night, his small twitches and shifts and the heat of him like a complex firewall against your nightmares. You wake up at five, dawn barely skimming the edge of your horizon. So you take the clean dishes out of the dishwasher, take out the trash, sort the recycling, start a load of laundry, make toast; you don't worry about the clatter.

He's a heavy sleeper, in some ways - you could knock over everything in the apartment and he'd maybe roll over, scratch his nose, mumble into the pillows. It's silence that makes Jake wake in terror. Silence means a tsunami. A hurricane. His island was never silent unless danger was imminent.

One tiny little concession after another: bit by bit you learned to make a human amount of noise, unlearned your stealth. Cohabitation is a slow lathe on your sharp edges - edges you once violently insisted you needed to keep. (The game, however, is over.)

_Our turn to host pizza night,_ you told him when he slouched, yawning, into the kitchen at half past nine.

_Oh. Yeah._ A yawn that you should not have found kittenish and adorable, a bleary squint in your direction. A look of pride on his face that meant _'my, what a big brain you've got in there, remembering all that.' _

_And you left your glasses in the bathroom._

_... Oh. Thanks,_ he yawned, brushing past you to fumble with a mug and the coffeepot.

You inhaled, and drank in the way his hair looks when he's slept on it entirely wrong, savored the mess.

_... Good morning,_ you said, a soft thing that caught in the back of your throat on the way out.

He took a long sip, swallowed - his adam's apple bobbed, down and up again. Turned his naked green eyes to you. You registered: amusement, crinkling in the corners. Fondness too deep to fathom.

Your hair raised the moment he set his mug down - you weren't expecting it, not on a conscious level, but your body anticipated his kiss. He tasted like coffee, and his stubble scratched your skin, and he smelt like he needed a shower, and you wouldn't have traded it for the universe.

_... Good morning,_ he said, when you could bear to be parted.

He was smiling.

_It's not funny,_ you told him.

_Hmm?_

_When we have backwards conversations. It's not cute. I'm just rude._

_Oh,_ he hummed. _Is that so._

_Yeah,_ you informed him, returning his mug to his hands and wrapping his fingers around it.

_I didn't say anything, my good fellow,_ he pointed out, raising his brows at you all innocent, guileless, _who-me-officer?_, sipping with his lips pressed to the rim in a manner clearly intended to stifle mirth.

_Yeah but you were thinking real loud_, you told him, exasperated, and he laughed. It was like sunrise had a sound.

Everyone calls it pizza night, but you can only remember two instances of pizza actually being ordered and eaten in the past year. Roxy and Jane are about an hour away by car, in different directions; Roxy at the technical university, Jane at the other end of the city. It's a habit among you to take turns coming around to each other's places every Friday night, swapping locations on a three-week rotation. Roxy buys a case of beer, Jane bakes dessert, no one ever remembers to bring board games, and you always end up ordering from the same shitty places that don't fucking deliver.

It's nice. Easy. Simple. You feel like the rut just needs to be worn a little bit further into the groove, and it'll stop being habit and start being tradition.

The thought is warm, and oddly melancholy in the creases. You never thought you'd live long enough for traditions. But look - here you are. Aren't you?

(The widening cracks in the back of your psyche. _Aren't you? Aren't you?_)

That Friday went about the same as every other Friday - comforting in its regularity, something your mind could grip with ease. Jake and Roxy started playing a noisy shooter game and became progressively louder as the evening wore on; you ended up tagging along with Jane to pick up the order, enjoying the chill night air and the city noises, her company.

Neon signs, street lamps, traffic. It was mostly clear that night; light pollution made the scattered clouds a dull grey-purple against a black backdrop, only the brightest stars visible. Unfamiliar constellations. You still haven't adjusted to the new night sky. You don't know if you ever will.

_I might open up a joke shop this summer_, Jane said, as you paused together at a crosswalk. _ I'm looking at office spaces to rent._

_Nice,_ you said, stuffing your hands in your pockets, rolling a twitch out of your shoulders. _I still don't know what I'm doing._

_Yeah_, she said. The walk light turned on; automatically, she reached for your hand, and you let her take it without commenting. Got to hold hands when you're crossing the street. Look both ways, kids. Safety first. _It's either that or private eye._

_Joke shop seems good to me,_ you told her.

_Everything feels like a joke, now,_ she murmured, fingers laced tight in yours, sweet mouth pinched. You didn't know what to say to that. You knew what she meant, though - the uselessness of everything, the boredom, the doldrums. Immortality is already baffling. She continued: _The game's over, but I keep waiting for something to just... happen. Nothing ever happens, anymore. _

You squeezed her hand, eyes on the sidewalk.

_... Why not do both?_

_Both?_ she asked.

_Private eye prankster._

You stepped aside in tandem to pass a group of teens with their arms linked, chattering amongst themselves about a movie they'd just seen, bags of grease and popcorn kernels still clutched in their hands. They were young like blank paper; it astonished you for a moment that anyone could ever be so young.

Jane watched them go; gradually her grip relaxed, tension ebbing out of her like an unvoiced sigh. _ Why not do both, really? Sillier things have happened._

You paid for the Thai food with a wad of bills from your pockets; Jane insisted on carrying the heavier bag, the one with the soup, and you bickered with her about it all the way home.

It's a home, not just an apartment; Jake is the taproot of your world, the center of gravity. Home is where the heart is, you've heard. Be it ever so humble, there's no place like it - and all the other hollow platitudes, one after another. But they're right. As long as he's there.

Friday turned to Saturday at midnight, and you were curled up on the couch next to Roxy, mildly buzzed, surrounded by paper plates, plastic forks, three half-empty bottles, caps stacked neatly on the coffee table. She was telling a story without a punchline, a long rambling yarn about university life, her undergraduate students, the hundred and one excuses they gave for late work, how she decided to weight the grading curve. You were nodding off; you'd been up since five, after all, and Roxy's twang is a soporific comfort.

It all dissolved into a treacle-thick blur of comfort, safety. You were at home, and they were with you. The warmth spread from the pit of your stomach, up through your chest, dissolving whatever it touched. You were so happy. At that moment, teetering on the edge of sleep, everything was all right. You relaxed into that assurance like you were boneless.

_Yo, D-Stri. Dirk. You about ready to hit the sack? ... Hey, Jake -_

_Got it._

His hand slid under your cheek, lifting you up off the pillow. You blinked the sleep off in a daze.

_Time for bed, old sport,_ he told you.

_I'm not tired,_ you mumbled, just to argue. You heard Roxy snicker, Jane's giggle.

But Jake kissed your forehead and told you _of course not, Dirk, but humor your old man a little_, and you felt like a knot had been pulled loose, all of a sudden, beneath your breastbone; something you hadn't known was tangled until the snag was yanked free. He didn't have to play along with you. A little drop of kindness when you didn't expect it; tiny, but you drown in it every time.

And you wanted to tell him you loved him, it was on the tip of your tongue, but you couldn't form your voice to the words, it stuck to your throat and wouldn't come out.

Docile, you let him lead you to your bedroom, his darker fingers wrapped around your wrist.

The only light shone from the digital clock on top of the dresser, but your feet knew the way. You let him strip your shirt and trousers off, let him tuck you into bed with a lot of flourish, limp with a strange sense of yearning. He was too close and not close enough. You needed to tell him and your voice was useless.

_Do you want a kiss goodnight?_ he asked you softly, bending over you, his hand pushing your hair away from your face, and you couldn't even object to being fussed over.

You could only pull him closer, mouth sealing against his.

_... I love you too,_ he told you, flushed, a minute or an hour or ten seconds later when you let him go again.

Like a dam breaking. Something cracking into a thousand pieces, the sharp edges melting.

_I couldn't say it,_ you murmured, fingers curling into his shirt. _I wanted to. Processing error. 'm sorry._

You felt him smiling against your face. _It's all right,_ he told you. _You were thinking it real loud._

What a terrible cheap shot. Using your own line on you.

You felt like your face was on fire, like you were going to combust. ... _Come to bed soon?_

_I will,_ he promised; he shut the door behind him on the way out, mindful of the hall light, but you had already fallen asleep when he got there. 12:36 AM.

* * *

The clock strikes one.

the clock strikes one.

the clock strikes one.

the clock strikes one and you are three saturdays ago when the sunlight spilled gold and holy over the two of you in bed. it was the slowest of mornings that afternoon, slow and lazy and you were bursting at the ribs with love, you couldn't get up at all despite your protests that there were a damn lot of things to do. his mouth teased you back again and again, fingertips dancing up your sides, until you gave into the hymn scratching at your nerves, that old rhapsody of lust and want and love and craving and desire, oh, three saturdays ago you woke up alive and beautiful.

you slid into him one milimeter at a time, barely blinking, every breath a soft uncertain little gasp, and he didn't look away from you once, he kept his green eyes open and absorbed you atom by atom. he said your name and ran his fingers through your hair over and over, he glowed beneath you like joy poured into flesh and blood.

and it was all right, he told you, he kissed the words into your mouth, it was all right, to want him so terribly.

you wanted him like blood wants iron and fire wants air.

a levy being swallowed by a flood, your want for him, and he only laughed and promised not to drown.

he coaxed you into letting go. you were terrified, helpless. your hunger crashed against his skin as waves do the shore. you fucked him desperately, crying like a hurt wolf.

_all right, all right_, he told you, embracing you with tenderness as you shuddered and shed your self-control; you fell and he caught you and you went on falling and he went on catching you, like he wasn't afraid of you at all.

you felt different, afterwards, as if he'd torn away your skin to reveal something else beneath it.

he curled around you and kissed you for hours and hours.

that day you didn't get up until your stomachs were too loud to ignore. and then in one of those inane but lovely synchronized moments you both suggested indian takeout at the same time, the same sentence falling out of your two mouths, and your heart leapt up your throat and you were so happy in that moment, so happy you could melt away like sugar in a teacup, like the smell of flowers on the breeze -

the clock strikes one.

the clock strikes one and three saturdays ago winks out, an afterimage of light.

it slips away from you like matter too fine to grasp, vanishing between your fingers.

you flounder in familiar darkness.

it is vast, and terrible, but it is not vast enough.

for you are not alone.

and the dark draws closer and closer like a noose.

you cover your eyes with your hands. you pull your knees to your chest. it makes no difference. it's too dark to make a difference between eyes wide open and eyes squeezed shut. and your brain ticks on, on and on like a perfect machine, even with that precious saturday taken away. you fool. did you think the hours were yours to keep?

_how many timelines stacked up, one atop the other in an endless line of errors, only to crumble into nothing against the alpha timeline? how many of you winked out into never existing?_

emptiness presses harder against every single one of your pores.

_oh, infinitely many, infinitely many. who knows how long parallel timelines might go on existing? who knows how long they have before they, too, might wink out? _

a sea of bodies too deep for you ever to break the surface. every error an error a thousand other Dirks made, an infinite number of copies of you, all of them furiously desperate to live, and what were the odds of winning?

_oh, infinitely little, infinitely little._

there are so hideously many worlds in which you didn't win the game.

the swallowing dark surges closer. your eardrums are ringing, your head feels like it's underwater. you did the math, didn't you? you had done the math. and you can't un-know a thing, once you know it. you cannot forget it. the fact twists though your guts like a corkscrew and the arc of the pain is searing, brilliant.

_a universe where he loves you is infinitely less likely than winning._

parallel universes, crowding against this one like locusts on an oasis. mandibles clattering. you shiver. you are terribly cold and your brain is boiling. you're sweating pure salt and adrenaline.

_so unlikely that the existence of even one would be improbable. insanely so._

you can remember what you thought, before the game was over, before the game even began. you thought to yourself: but if one miracle of statistics did, in fact, blossom into existence, why, you swore to yourself you'd find a way to make it this one. this universe. you.

_surely you would be the Dirk to win against the odds. and if you didn't -_

an infinite number of hands, beating against an infinite number of barriers, a scream of frustration that you cannot hear, but the reverberations from which are like a buzzsaw against your spine. you are breathing with your mouth open, frantic for air. the dark presses, and presses, and presses.

_\- you'd claw your way out, and into the one where you did._

infinitely many of you.

_the dark is hungry._

the clock strikes -

_two. _

_thump-thump._

_a heartbeat. _

you can feel only terror.

\- nails hammer through your skull. a bolt. a fracture.

you can't hear a thing. your ears are ringing like the drums have burst. the marrow has been sucked out of your bones and replaced with molten iron, your skin is melting off, the pain is incredible - you feel nothing in your chest, you are dying.

**_\- they are here._**

you open and shut your eyes, but you can only see darkness. your throat hurts - your jaw is dislocated, every joint is raw, electricity crackling through your nerves as you struggle to move.

_\- old boy._

... Your heart.

_Thump-thump._

It is your heart, your own, and it's beating in your chest.

\- Your jaw clicks, you realize you're breathing. You bit your tongue, you can taste the tang of blood in your mouth. ... The adrenaline is making your pulse race. Fast enough to hurt. Your muscles are wound so tight, your entire body is vibrating like a string that some fucking giant won't stop _plucking_ -

You blink. You keep blinking, you can't see.

Body is attached.

You're alive? You're alive.

White light. Blurs. Where are you?

There's something cold on your forehead.

" - right, old boy -"

You strain to hear through the static in your ears.

"- all right, it's all right. Easy."

Clarity breaks like a bubble bursting, cool like a rush of clean water.

Green eyes.

Green eyes, tired and a little bit red with lack of sleep, staring into yours so gently you almost can't bear it. Where are you?

Searing hot sunlight makes the whites of your tangled bedsheets glare. Bedsheets. The set cost fifteen dollars because there was a sale, and you bought it together when you were out shopping to pick up a new standing lamp, and you usually wash the sheets and the pillowcases together with his plethora of identical white socks.

You are crouched above Jake's body on bent legs.

The muzzle of one of his Berrettas is pressing right between your eyebrows.

You keep blinking, automatically, but you can see very clearly now.

You can see that your hands are around his neck, thumbs pressed deeply into his throat.

" - All right, old boy, easy. All right," Jake is saying, over and over, in a quiet hoarse voice. His eyes do not leave yours. He is so calm, and gentle, and so tired.

Jake is so strong.

He has to be.

"... Dirk?" he says, very gently. You cannot bear it.

He's pulling the gun away. Tension is ebbing out of your limbs. Your hands feel frostbite-stiff but the berserker strength is fading from you. You are aware of the bruising on his skin, the gentle click-click-click of the venetian blinds against the open window as they swing in the breeze, the stench of your sweat pervading the air. Every cell in your entire body is sore.

You wish he would keep the gun pressed close to your skull.

You wish he would shoot you.

"... Oh, _Dirk_," he says, and he sounds so relieved, and you would like to tell him you are sorry, but you can only howl like a broken thing, scream in animal despair as he holds you close.

* * *

How many times has Jake woken up to you trying to kill him? How many times has it happened, how many more times will it happen? You've lost count. You don't know.

"Don't fuss. It's one of the symptoms, chap. Veterans get it all the time. On my honor. You can look it up," Jake tells you. "Anyway, no real harm done." He is standing, somehow, and frying himself a plate of eggs and sausage; the marks on his neck and shoulders are purpling, and you can't bear to look. Instead you return to picking at the corn flakes in front of you - milk to the side, you could never stand the texture of mushy cereal. Jake is walking around and speaking as if it's just another day, and you wonder if later you'll find new gray strands in his hair, count new lines of weariness in his face.

He can't keep doing this forever, can he?

"This time," you concede, sullen. The skin beneath your eyes feels raw, puffy; your nose is sore. You ran out of tears and snot two hours ago.

He sits down next to you, scooting closer until your chairs bump together, shoulder to shoulder.

"I'm sorry," you say, hands folded in your lap. "I didn't mean to."

"Of course not." Picks up his silverware, dashes everything with salt and pepper from the shakers. You track his movements peripherally.

"I thought you were me."

He stops chewing. Swallows, with some difficulty. "... Dirk," he says, at a loss, setting his knife and fork down. "What were you dreaming about?"

You hesitate. But you owe him - at the very, very least - an explanation. It won't help, telling him about it. This is not like a phobia of the dark, a simple little fear of spiders, something to be cured with exposure therapy. If only you were that simple.

"It's kinda the same nightmare every time. I - It starts off with a memory, with something normal, but then it vanishes. And I can sense all of their hearts."

"Whose?"

"Mine. All of the copies - the different versions of me, from every other timeline, they crowd me. They want to take my place." He's staring at you, but you can't bring yourself to raise your head. Your eyes are fixed on the grain of the tabletop. "What if they did? What if they managed to get through. While I was sleeping. And I woke up - not someone else, not really, but a different Dirk, a different heart using the same brain, he'd have all my memories and you wouldn't even know I was gone -"

"Don't be daft," Jake says, voice hard with anger. Your knuckles are white, fingernails digging into your palms - your own voice is a raw, pained rasp, sounds like someone tried to strangle you. Kinda ironic, considering the circumstances.

"I'd have no way of knowing," you murmur, mind dizzy with defeat. Every train of reasoning you try to follow runs up against a brick wall dead end. "I can't tell if it's real or not. I don't know -"

"Dirk," Jake says, firmly, and lays both of his hands over your shaking ones. Frustration, affection, pity. His body temperature always just a little bit cooler than yours, his heartbeat just a little bit slower. Dark thumbs rub circles on the tender insides of your bony wrists, caressing your pulse point. "Dirk, my loon. My one and only. _The game is over._"

You let your head fall, helpless, into his shoulder, and shudder out your breath in a sigh.

Yes, that's right, the game is over. Everyone keeps telling you that, you'd think you'd get it.

This is reality, this place of light and warmth, ripe oranges falling from street carts in summer and dollar store candycanes in hot cocoa when winter coats the city with ice and sleet. Here, where the washing machine hums and you pin up your clothes to dry on the roof when the weather's clear, where everyone's alive and he loves you, he loves you, you fall asleep beside him and wake in his arms. Your nightmares are fiction, however dark and however persuasive.

If only you could believe any of that.

If only you weren't so fucking crazy.

This time, when the tears come, they leak out of your raw eyes and dampen his shirt with no fanfare at all, a steady drip of sorrow. His hand runs up and down the bumps of your vertebrae, warm and solid.

"I'm sorry," you whisper, and he tells you it's all right, croons soft reassurances into your ear, spoons cereal into your mouth, but this is what you are apologizing for:

This world is so peaceful and simple it seems alien; his love bewilders you. The idyll of your life here is like a glimpse of heaven, and like most guilty sinners you feel the nagging sense that you were never meant to see it. It's everything you ever wanted. Everything every iteration of you could possibly have wanted. The likelihood of this happily-ever-after is so miniscule, so minute, that you're convinced this must be the only timeline ever to reach it.

And if the dreams are real, you're just one more Dirk in a long line of them, each heart breaking through to this timeline and devouring its predecessor, a million more anxiously hammering against the walls of paradox space for their turn in paradise.

It's 4:36 in the afternoon on Saturday.

How much longer before the next heart takes your place?

The clock above the stove ticks at a steady pace, like a metronome.

Every day you love him more and more, and deserve him less and less.

You're sorry. The best you can do is believe that every moment in this beautiful world - this impossible world where he loves you - is only yours on loan.

_I love you_, you told him that night, after he took you to bed and fucked you gently into the mattress, fingers glued to yours with sweat. He sighed, a deep baritone sigh, kissing you on the forehead; murmured _I love you as well, you rotten bastard_, which made you snicker.

You pulled the sheets up around you both and he fell asleep half-draped across your body, breathing into your neck, every exhalation a tiny flare of warmth.

Unable to sleep, you watched the slices of moonlight travel across the carpet, watched his ribcage rise and fall, and watched the digital clock on the dresser blink slowly towards Sunday.


End file.
